


These Sweet and Bitter Sounds

by Pamplemousse



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, Romance, brief description of violence against children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:35:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pamplemousse/pseuds/Pamplemousse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They each suppose that this is what it must mean to love someone, but those aren’t the words they use.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Sweet and Bitter Sounds

\---

When it begins between them, it begins with a press of bodies, honest and greedy for contact and pressure and heat.

It begins when Sherlock presses John down against the mattress, stretching the length of his body on top of him and going still. He soaks up the pulse of John’s skin, the thud of his heart, the perpetual motion of his body that thrums even as John lies breathless beneath him. John’s hands cup the sharp crests of Sherlock’s shoulders and he presses his cheek against Sherlock’s, saying nothing and saying too much.

After, it’s the heavy weight of a duvet pulled over shoulders, mingling breath and brief, strangely chaste kisses against John’s lips, then along his jaw, down his neck, tracing over his collarbones. Sherlock winds around him and seems to melt into the mattress, the chaotic nest of blankets and twisted sheets. John skims his fingers across the bare skin of Sherlock’s shoulders and settles his hand, warm and heavy, at the small of his back.

This is the first but it started ages ago, months of faulty steps mingled with a driving, blinding joy that’s too sharp and too hot to touch with bare hands. This is the first time Sherlock has touched John with his whole body and it shoots through him like an electric shock that’s only possible because John has grounded him so firmly to the earth.

Late in the night he feels John’s hands move him, tipping him onto his back, and John covers him with every inch of skin he has to give.

\---

John finds that he quite likes the feeling of Sherlock pressed wholly on top of him, smothering him into the sheets or the beaten cushions of their couch. He likes it when Sherlock slowly unfolds him across their bed, the duvet shoved to the floor and the pillows scattered. Sherlock bears down on John, chest to chest, stretching out his fingertips and tangling their toes.

John likes it when they have sex like that, with John spread out flat on his belly and Sherlock on top of him, between his thighs. Sherlock wraps his arms around John’s chest, breathes warm and wet against his neck, pushes John’s thighs further apart until they burn, pins him down and fucks him so slowly.

John fancies it’s one of the odd little ways in which they’re well suited for each other. Sherlock prefers to be coolly detached from most others, but he’s more than satisfied to glut himself on John.

\---

Sherlock likes it too. He likes it so much he could drown in it, could drink it up for the rest of his days until he’s plump and round with every drop of John’s attention.

\---

In exchange for Sherlock’s focused, consuming affections, John offers him care. Quiet, understated. Constant in a way that Sherlock can’t fully grasp and John just accepts as part of how he responds to Sherlock.

They each suppose that this is what it must mean to love someone, but those aren’t the words they use.

John hums, tapping Sherlock’s back. “I want to watch that one.”

Laid out on his stomach across their bed, Sherlock stretches his arms over his head, enjoying the feel of the sheets against his bare skin. John sits cross-legged next to him, squinting down at the expanse of Sherlock’s back. He runs his finger over a dark mole and leans down to examine it closer.

“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” he says.

“Then don’t worry about it,” Sherlock murmurs, his face turned into the sheets.

John rubs the spot. “Doesn’t hurt to keep an eye on it.”

His hand lingers, and Sherlock shivers as the tips of John’s fingers trail lightly up and down his spine. He revels in the sensation for a moment, then rolls onto his back, grabbing John’s hand and pressing his lips to the center of his palm. John smiles and rests his other hand low on Sherlock’s abdomen.

The evening light from the window is obscured by Sherlock’s heavy curtains. The soft orange glow of the lamp paints the planes of Sherlock’s skin warm and rosy, and John imagines he can feel the heat rising in Sherlock’s cheek.

A tug brings him down against Sherlock’s side, half-sprawled across him. He leans up to kiss the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, slides a hand through his hair. Sherlock leans into the touch then shifts until he is fully on top of John, pinning him to the sheets.

Sherlock props up on his elbows, his forearms framing John’s face. John’s lips are parted; his eyes spark and he grins. He arches up and presses his mouth against Sherlock’s, drawing him down with lingering, teasing kisses. Sherlock rolls his hips in a rough grind and swallows up John’s groan.

Here in their bed, with the curtains pulled and the door closed and his mind gone quiet, Sherlock can imagine for a moment that this could be all he needs. Cases to keep his blood from turning to treacle. Experiments bubbling on the kitchen table. John turning back their sheets and tutting over whatever bit of Sherlock that has taken his worry -- a dark spot on his back, a not-quite-healed cut on his arm, the whisper of his lungs, the thud of his heart: the everyday matters of Sherlock’s matter that are so constantly present in John’s mind.

He is gristle and meat and bone and fluids and John doesn’t seem to mind at all.

Sherlock tucks his face into John’s neck and breathes deeply. John still smells like John, tastes like John, feels like John should feel. He sucks gently at his throat.

The muscles in John’s shoulders tense, and Sherlock braces himself the moment before John rolls them, ending with John planted firmly across his hips. John leans down and takes his mouth thoroughly, drawing in Sherlock’s lower lip and coaxing his mouth open. Sighing into the kiss and resting his hands on the tops of John’s thighs, Sherlock allows his mind to empty of everything except the sensation (soft, wet, pressure, heat) of John’s lips against his.

John sits up and shifts back until he is stretched out on his stomach between Sherlocks parted thighs. He mouths against the cloth of Sherlock’s cotton pants until the fabric stretched over his hardening cock is warm and damp. He glances up the length of Sherlock’s body until he meets his eyes.

Sherlock shifts, trying to contain his impatience, nudging his groin forward. John smiles and hooks his fingers inside the waistband of Sherlock’s pants.

“Slow,” he murmurs. “I want all of you.”

He slips Sherlock’s shorts down a fraction and presses a kiss to the thickening head of his cock, letting his lips linger.

Slow. Careful. Sherlock breathes in deeply and closes his eyes.

\---

Sometimes, it’s all very simple.

John wakes the next morning to find himself tangled up in Sherlock. Bony knees tucked between his thighs, long fingers caught in the hem of his shirt, the warm weight of Sherlock’s head resting low on his stomach. Sherlock’s slow breaths warm his skin.

A slip of light cuts across the room from a narrow gap in the curtains. John rests a hand at the nape of Sherlock’s neck and sleeps a while longer.

\---

When he’s feeling demonstrative, Sherlock likes to crowd him.

John will stand in the kitchen, making tea and waiting for the toast to pop. Sherlock in the sitting room, flipping through the files from an old case, digging out experiment write-ups. The room is filled with the soft murmur of paper and clicking keys and Sherlock’s occasional low mutter. The rustling in the sitting room will go quiet, and John will hardly notice until Sherlock slides up behind him, settling his hands at John’s hips and drawing up close, connecting them by the firm points of contact at his fingertips. He’ll hum and kiss at the base of John’s throat, slowly dragging his hands forward until he’s wound around John like a vine.

It’s as if he wants to take up all the space surrounding John, breath up all the air in his lungs and fill him only with his presence. It should drive him up the wall; it does, on occasion, when he’s stewing over something Sherlock’s done and Sherlock tries to slip into his space and overwhelm his anger with the heated press of his body.

But more often than not, John senses the gesture for what it is: contentment, hunger, desire, contrition, need. Sherlock expressing himself viscerally because words are so flimsy and inadequate and _wrong_ so much of the time.

\---

John doesn’t need the words because Sherlock speaks without them.

Because on the mornings when they wake up together and John has to go into the clinic early, Sherlock unsubtly tries to tempt him back between the sheets, stretching and arching his back and savouring the creaking of the mattress as he writhes with a coy glint in his eye.

Because sometimes he stays in bed until John comes home.

Because he keeps a detailed map of John’s favoured restaurants tucked away in that massive brain of his, ready to swing them down a side road and give John a chance to rest and refuel during a case.

Because on the days when John goes dark and quiet, overburdened with anger and regret and half-forgotten faces, Sherlock draws the curtains, brings the chaos of the flat to a standstill for as long as it takes for John to come back to him.

Because he hums into John’s half-awake morning kisses, accepts and returns his goodbye and hello kisses, grins into his lingering and inviting kisses, shivers and moans into his deep, consuming kisses.

Because he sighs so sweetly when John presses into him, opens his thighs wider and tilts his hips up and draws John down to bite and suck at his lips. Because when he’s getting close he gasps as if John is driving the air right out of his lungs, and when he tumbles over the edge he arches his back in a slow roll and groans from the soles of his feet.

Because when John twisted the hell out of his ankle stepping wrong off a kerb, Sherlock let him manfully wince his way up the stairs under his own steam before guiding him to the sofa. Because he buried John in blankets, pushed a mug of tea into his hands, flipped on reruns of John’s preferred telly programs, and let him fall asleep slumped against his shoulder.

Because occasionally, when John has had a long day out in the world, he comes home to find a sandwich and a mug of tea waiting for him on the kitchen table.

Because John likes how heavy and solid Sherlock feels against him, and he burns under the intensity of Sherlock’s singular focus, and he willingly loses himself in how fast Sherlock runs and how ravenously he bites at John’s throat under the collar of his jumper, and Sherlock _knows, he knows, he knows_.

\---

Sherlock kisses John’s lips. Sherlock kisses his jaw and the shell of his ear and each delicate eyelid.

Sherlock sucks kisses into John’s neck and feels John’s low whine vibrating through his throat. He presses his lips thickly against John’s throbbing pulse point.

Sherlock kisses his chest, his abdomen, the crest of each hipbone.

Sherlock slides his hands under John’s knees and lifts. He runs hot, humid kisses along the insides of John’s thighs, up to the crease where they meet his hips. He breathes in deeply, lets the earthy richness of John’s scent buzz through his brain and presses light kisses up the underside of John’s cock.

John lies flat on his back, exposed and open, panting up at the ceiling, his hands twisted up in the sheets.

Sherlock mouths at the root of his cock and down over the tight skin of his balls. He pushes John’s knees back against his chest to slide down deeper between his thighs.

“ _Sherlock._ ” John’s whisper goes up like a prayer to mingle with the rest of his stuttered gasps and light, trembling groans.

\---

It’s enough. Most of the time, they’re enough.

\---

It is winter, and they spend four days chasing a kidnapper through the narrow twists of London, frantically tracking scant leads that come to nothing every time. Sherlock becomes increasingly wild and frenzied as he attempts to scrape evidence out of the barest observations. He whirls through the city, and behind every new avenue of pursuit is the sucking desperation of _this time, this time, this time_.

They’re too late, in the end. The boy is dead, strung up by his neck in the cellar in some dark, creeping neighborhood, far from where they’d been searching. Sherlock finds him, and John finds Sherlock, standing in the doorway and staring, his expression emptier than John has ever seen it.

John looks into the room long enough to see, and the details simmer behind his eyes. Heavy rope, rough, abrasive – scrapes on boy’s neck, unbroken neck – bare feet, just off the ground, just far enough that he would have been reaching, stretching, straining, gasping—

It had been slow. There’d been time.

Behind him, Lestrade and his team thunder down the stairs, and the sound snaps John back into himself. He reaches out and carefully takes hold of the edge of Sherlock’s coat sleeve. The line of Sherlock’s body is stiff; John pulls on his sleeve and eases him out of the doorway. Sherlock moves back as Lestrade steps forward, his face set in a stony grimace, pushing past the threshold and disturbing the stillness of the grotesque tableau.

Sherlock stands to the side as the officers pass him and stares hard at a point over John’s shoulder. John waits.

There’s nothing left for them here.

In the next moment Sherlock brushes past him and lights up the stairs and out of the house. John catches up with him on the edge of the street, and without a second look back Sherlock takes them left, toward the high street. His long legs propel him forward and John lengthens his stride, keeping close. Sherlock manages to hail a cab and John directs the driver to Baker Street.

Sherlock bundles into the far corner of the seat, his face turned to the window and his coat wrapped firmly about him. They sit in silence as London, never settled even in the deepest dark of early morning, rushes past.

John texts Lestrade to tell him they’ll be in tomorrow to make their statements. His phone beeps at the affirmative response, and John tucks it away.

When they arrive at Baker Street Sherlock bursts from the cab and stalks to the front door, pushing inside and leaving the door open behind him. John sits in the cab, abruptly overcome with weariness. He presses two fingers to his eyes and breathes deeply for a moment, then pulls himself out of the cab and hands the driver his fare.

He makes his way up the creaking stairs and stands in the doorway to watch as Sherlock prowls the flat, tense and sharp. Closing the door behind him, John steps carefully into the sitting room, keeping clear of Sherlock’s agitated pacing. The lights in the flat are off, save for one small lamp that casts the room in clinging shadows.

With a cut off snarl Sherlock finally settles in his chair. He sits straight-backed, eyes closed, his hands pressed together under his chin and his body coiled tight.

John stands still in the doorway of the kitchen, lost in the absence of thought, a rushing, faceless nothing that sounds like an empty ringing in his ears. He feels hollowed out, like someone took an apple corer to his chest and scraped him clean. He steps into the kitchen and flicks on the light, blinking in the sudden brightness.

The hours after the completion of a case are usually devoted to eating too much, laughing together, lounging in the thrill of their success, soaking in a well-earned rest. On occasion they would pop open a bottle or two of wine, drink until they were loose and warm and their hands were beginning to wander.

The kitchen is too bright. John isn’t hungry.

He makes a pot of tea and sets a cup at Sherlock’s elbow. He goes back to make a cup for himself and instead pours the rest of the pot down the sink.

“I’m going to bed,” he says into the silence of the sitting room. Sherlock doesn’t respond. John switches off the kitchen light and steps into the bedroom.

He leaves the bedroom light off and walks into the bathroom, stripping off the clothes that stink of sweat and smoke and adrenaline and leaving them in a pile on the floor. The shower is hot, a shock, and John stands for a minute, trying to soak the cold out of his bones. The drumming noise of the water fills up his head. He breathes deeply, flexing his fingers in an attempt to ward off the tremor he feels starting up in his hand.

Shutting off the water, John steps out and grabs a towel from the rack. He dries himself briskly, rubs the towel over his hair, then turns off the light and returns to the bedroom.

The room is cloaked in a smooth, heavy darkness. The duvet on the bed is rumpled and chaotic, left untouched after four days of brief naps on the sofa. John doesn’t bother to dress, dropping onto the bed and dragging the blanket over him.

The silence that permeates the flat becomes unnerving. It isn’t often that John wishes for Sherlock’s disturbances, the clatter of an experiment, the shriek of his violin, the low murmur of Sherlock’s constant monologues. He would take anything now -- a shouted rant, an unexpected explosion, gunshots in the sitting room, music blaring out from the headphones on the skull -- anything to drown out Sherlock’s ominous silence.

John pulls the duvet over his head, but in the cocoon of sheets and blankets he can hear his own breathing, and that is worse. He flips the duvet down to his chest and spreads out on his back.

John eventually falls into a light doze. He wakes (minutes, hours, days later) at the creak of the floorboards in the hallway.

Sherlock is more than capable of moving about the flat silently if he wishes, having long ago memorized the pattern of creaks and groans in their floors. John opens his eyes and lets out a long breath, waiting.

The bedroom door swings silently open and light spills in from the hallway. Sherlock steps inside and closes the door with a quiet click.

John scrubs his hands over his face and sits up in bed. The line of Sherlock’s shoulders is barely visible in the darkness of their bedroom, but John can sense the tension in him, the tightness in his eyes.

John murmurs, “You alright?” and Sherlock seems to come awake, sucking in a tight breath and flexing his fingers. He moves away from the door and removes his clothes, his movements stiff and rushed – shoes pulled off roughly, trousers dropped, fingers stumbling over too many buttons. When he undoes the final button on his shirt cuff he throws the garment off, dropping it on the floor with the rest of his clothing.

He yanks back the duvet and John flinches at the rush of cool air. Sherlock climbs on top of him and straddles his hips.

Firm hands seize John’s shoulders, and John lets Sherlock push him down against the mattress. Sherlock drops forward to press a rough kiss against his lips, all tension and pressure and clicking teeth. John’s hands come up to grip his arms and Sherlock presses harder, driving forward, bracing his hands against John’s skull. John gasps and pushes Sherlock back far enough to catch his breath. Sherlock hunches over him, squeezes his eyes shut and presses their foreheads together.

“Sherlock, Jesus,” John breathes. Sherlock shakes his head and pushes harder against him until John winces, reaches up to cup his palms at the back of Sherlock’s head. “Shh, just. Breathe. Just lay here for a second.”

A harsh, hot breath rushes against John’s face and Sherlock seems to deflate, dropping his weight fully against John’s chest and leaning his face into the hollow of John’s throat. John rests his hands against Sherlock’s back, counts the breaths he feels rising and falling out of Sherlock’s lungs.

Long minutes pass before Sherlock stirs and sits up again to meet John’s eyes. He reaches out and traces the tips of his fingers over John’s lips. His skin is cool; John turns into the touch, presses a soft kiss against rough pads and then breathes against them, warming them. Sherlock’s breath catches and his fingers twitch against John’s mouth. He searches John’s face for something he probably couldn’t even put a name to -- anger, patience, absolution.

John rolls and slowly spills Sherlock onto his side. He smoothes his hand down Sherlock’s side, over his back, feeling the jut of his ribs and the knobs of his spine. The duvet is tangled at their feet; John drags it up and settles it around their shoulders.

He rests his hand against the side of Sherlock’s face, the tips of his fingers threading into his hair, and concentrates wholly on the feel of Sherlock’s skin under his palm.

_It’s not your fault._

Sherlock sets his fingers very carefully against John’s hip.

_I should have solved it._

_You did everything you could. More than anyone else could have._

Sherlock is slipping. Four days running on surges of adrenaline, sustained on little food and the briefest of rests, leave him sinking heavy and fast into a thick mire of unconsciousness. His body demands time to recuperate, reset, reboot, sort and file new information, relieve the strain in his muscles and heal the scrapes on his palms.

John knows the pattern. It’s enough to know that Sherlock is here, in their bed, under their blankets, close enough that John can feel the weight and warmth of his body.

Sherlock blinks, long and slow, as sleep swells against him, filling his mouth in long rushes. He closes his eyes. The weight of John’s hand seems to hold him under until he lets the darkness swallow him up.

\---

When John wakes the bedroom is still mostly dark, the sun only just beginning to creep between the curtains and suffuse the bedroom with muted light. It’s early yet, too early to be awake again considering how late it was when they went to bed. John opens his eyes and blinks up at the ceiling, the room cast grey and flat in the low light.

He looks across the bed and finds Sherlock stretched out on his stomach, his face pushed into the pillow and only the top of his head visible over the edge of the duvet. Sherlock’s leg breaches the space between them and rests proprietarily against John’s ankle. John slides a hand under the blanket and comes in contact with the warm skin of Sherlock’s arm.

The bedroom is silent but for Sherlock’s low breathing, muffled against the pillow. John strokes his arm with the tips of his fingers for a moment, then gradually shifts closer, pulling back the edge of the duvet away from Sherlock’s face.

Sherlock doesn’t stir. His hair falls in limp curls around his face, unwashed and threaded with sleep sweat. He’s deeply asleep, and John is satisfied to let him be. Usually John would join him, drag Sherlock back against him and just drift until the sun is higher and the sounds of London crest into a mid-morning crescendo. Not this morning. He’s too far gone now, too awake and too full of thoughts for the day ahead to stay in bed, however tempting the idea might be.

He’ll get up. He’ll leave Sherlock to sleep a while longer, if getting up doesn’t wake him. He’ll make them an enormous breakfast to make up for not eating the night before. Sherlock will wake and shower away the last few days’ worth of grime and enter the kitchen fresh and crisp and pressed. His hair will be damp still, curling around his ears and falling over his brow, and he’ll seat himself neatly at the kitchen table and pluck up a single piece of toast off the pile John’s laid out. John will fill a plate with eggs and bacon and beans and set it in front of Sherlock with a cup of coffee.

They’ll make their way to the Yard and give Lestrade their statements, then take the long way back to Baker Street, rambling through the city. Sherlock will stop at John’s favourite curry place and they’ll make it back to the flat just as the sun begins to slip below the skyline.

They’ll take turns drinking straight from a bottle of sweet wine, and when night falls John will tuck his fingers into Sherlock’s belt loops and walk him back to their bedroom. They’ll push the bedclothes to the floor, and John will push Sherlock onto his back, sitting across his thighs and loosely pinning his hands above his head.

Sherlock will be hazy and pliant and still, and he’ll look up at John like he’s made of glass, sharp and unbending and utterly transparent. He’ll flex his fingers against John’s hands and relax completely into the mattress.

They won’t talk about it, because it’s over and done with. John doesn’t have words to fix this, but then Sherlock’s never put much faith in the things people say. John will kiss him, soft and long, and Sherlock will sigh against his mouth and close his eyes.

It’s enough. For them, for today, it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me tumbln over [here](http://mysterybees.tumblr.com).


End file.
